Purchased from Michigan State University, 1995; additions by gift from Kent State University, 2005. MSU’s portion was purchased from California dealer William Wredon in 1957, KSU’s from Chiswick Bookshop in 1975.

Conditions Governing Access

The Douglas C. McMurtrie Papers are open for research in the Special Collections Reading Room; 1 box at a time (Priority III).

Ownership and Literary Rights

The Douglas C. McMurtrie Papers are the physical property of the Newberry Library. Copyright may belong to the authors or their legal heirs or assigns. For permission to publish or reproduce any materials from this collection, contact the Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections.

Cite As

Douglas C. McMurtrie Papers, The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Processed by

Adrian Alexander, Paul F. Gehl, and Mette Shayne, 1998-2014.

Biography of Douglas C. McMurtrie

Probably best known today as a printing historian and bibliographer, McMurtrie was for much of his lifetime even better recognized as a typographer and specialist in advertising typography.

Born in Belmar, New Jersey in 1888, McMurtrie attended the Hill School (Pottstown, PA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Starting in 1909 he worked with the Pittsburgh Typhoid Fever Commission and other relief agencies, including the Red Cross Institute for Disabled and Crippled Men, primarily directing printing and publicity operations, though he also authored a number of articles on social issues relating to the disabled, on prostitution, and on sexuality. He remained active with the Shriners Hospitals for the rest of his life. McMurtrie subsequently worked for Cheltenham Press, the Columbia University Printing Office, Arbor Press, and Condé Nast Press. He came to Chicago in 1925 to work for Cuneo Press, one of the largest printers in the city, as director of typography. A year later, he moved to the Ludlow Typograph Co., a manufacturer of type setting machinery, also as director of typography. He retained that title until his death in 1944, although from the early 1930s he worked only part-time for Ludlow and concentrated instead on bibliographical projects and writing about the history of printing. For this work he regularly collaborated with Major A. H. Allen. For some works, like his
Modern Typography and Layout (1929), McMurtrie used a private imprint, Eyncourt Press. He also used this imprint for a few pieces of erotica, most notably the early lesbian novel, Mary Casal’s
The Stone Wall. McMurtrie’s
The Golden Book, a popular, general history of printing, was first issued in 1927 by the Chicago publisher Pascal Covici, and re-issued in 1937 by a successor firm in New York, Covici-Friede. A third edition, entitled
The Book, was published in 1943 by Oxford University Press, New York and remained in print until 1972. McMurtrie planned a multi-volume
History of Printing in the United States; but only Volume II, concerning the Middle Atlantic States, ever appeared (1936). Also in 1936, his idea for a systematic American Imprints Inventory was adopted by the federal Works Project Administration. He directed that project until his death in 1944.

Scope and Content of the Collection

Professional files of designer and printing historian Douglas C. McMurtrie active in Chicago from 1925 until his death in 1944.

The collection includes extensive correspondence concerning McMurtrie’s professional roles at Cuneo Press, Ludlow Typograph Co., the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen, the Historical Records Survey undertaken by the WPA, and the American Imprints Inventory, also a WPA project. There are extensive files concerning his many writings on printing history and design. A few files concern his original design work, including the type face
Ultramodern, his work with disabled veterans, his authorship of articles on sexual deviance, his writings and activities around the Gutenberg centennial in 1940, and his role as publisher of a lesbian autobiographical novel, Mary Casal’s
The Stone Wall, and other titles through his personal imprint, Eyncourt Press. There are also some files concerning personal and family matters, and a few photographs, mostly portraits of McMurtrie. The most extensive correspondence files concern Frederick V. Carpenter, Luther H. Evans and others at the WPA, Aloys Ruppel, Leslie E. Sprunger of Ludlow Typograph Co., and Norman Forgue of Black Cat Press. McMurtrie also did design work for such publishers as the Caxton Club, Pascal Covici, and Covici-Friede, Inc.

For the most part, the files are in sequences devised by McMurtrie and his various collaborators between 1925 and 1944. The principal exceptions concern biographical information (Series 7), written works (Series 4), design work (Series 5), and printed ephemera (Series 8), which were created during processing. Series 1 is a standard business file containing outgoing and incoming correspondence carefully alphabetized by a secretary or secretaries, apparently at the Ludlow Typograph Co. offices. It was partly rehoused at Michigan State in the 1960s and fully rehoused again at the Newberry in 1998. Series 2 apparently represents materials more haphazardly filed at McMurtrie's home and private offices by a variety of assistants over the years. The most important was Maj. A. H. Allen, who was also McMurtrie's ghost writer on some projects; some of Allen’s personal correspondence is also embedded here. Extensive files on McMurtrie’s work for the Ludlow Typograph Co. (Series 3) and the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen (Series 6) were extracted from Series 1 and 2, which were parallel (and largely duplicative) for these subjects.

Incoming and outgoing business correspondence from 1930-1944 with a very few earlier letters, filed in the order his secretary maintained it, alphabetical by correspondent. Overlaps with other series or subjects (e.g. Ludlow, IAPHC, and WPA) and significant institutional correspondents are noted in parentheses.

Basically a second alphabetical correspondence series, but the ordering is looser and at some point (at Michigan State?) it was labeled a subject series, primarily because it contains substantial groups of files by subject. It contains correspondence filed by correspondent, interfiled subject files containing drafts of essays, notes, pamphlets and photocopies, and correspondence grouped by subject. Many of the subject files repeat material also to be found in Series 4 (Written Works) and 5 (Design Works). Ephemera unaccompanied by correspondence have been removed to Series 8.